Venice's Patriots Park to hold Fallen Heroes Memorial

By TERRY O'CONNORCorrespondent

Sunday

Aug 28, 2011 at 4:42 PMAug 28, 2011 at 6:35 PM

A memorial honoring U.S. military personnel and the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks has found a home in 3.5-acre Patriots Park in Venice after two earlier proposed Sarasota County locations fell through.

Supporters say it will be the first dual-purpose memorial of its kind in the nation if approved as expected at the Sept. 8 meeting of the county's advisory council on parks and recreation.

The Venice City Council voted unanimously last week to recommend the Fallen Heroes Memorial to county commissioners, and organizers are elated.

"It's going to be in its rightful place," said Gene Sweeney of Salt of the Earth USA LLC, which has been pushing the project for two years. "I truly, truly believe Patriots Park in Venice is an ideal place for it."

Pam Johnson, Venice city spokeswoman and a member of the Leadership Sarasota Class of 2002, which created Patriots Park as its class project after the 9/11 attacks, said the symmetry is irresistible.

"Patriots Park was designed to honor people who have fought for this country and have given their lives for this country," Johnson said. "There are already flags there for all armed services and police and fire personnel, too."

A linchpin of the project is former firefighter Lee Ielpi of New York, who answered the 9/11 call nearly a decade ago along with his son, Jonathan, and Squad 288 in Queens. Three months later, Ielpi helped retrieve the body of his son from the World Trade Tower One wreckage.

Not content to simply grieve, Ielpi said the Fallen Heroes project is one of hundreds of memorials he has been involved with in the past decade. He also helped organize the September 11th Families Association to provide counseling and support to 9/11 survivors and establish scholarships in memory of the lost men and women.

"We constantly say the same words: We will never forget," Ielpi said. "But what's more important is: What are we going to do to never forget? This is a great project."

Upon Sweeney's request, Ielpi worked with New York authorities to secure a 2-ton steel beam for the memorial from the World Trade Center wreckage.

Ralph Vincent, head instructor of drafting and computer-aided design at Manatee Technical Institute, made a student project out of incorporating the massive beam into a Fallen Heroes Memorial design. Vincent said project renderings recently approved by the Venice City Council were designed mainly by Cory Pike, a 2011 Lakewood Ranch High School graduate and a part-time student at MTI.

Vincent said the memorial should never have become the political football it did when organizers could not agree on two earlier sites.

"They wanted to put it at Lakewood Ranch and some people had their own agenda and it kind of...got turned around where local politics killed it," Vincent said. "Business owners were asking why we would have a memorial of something that happened in New York."

Vincent said he and his students never lost sight of the project's true purpose.

"To me...it was just a wonderful thing to be able to design a memorial because we're not only recognizing those who have lost their lives, we're recognizing the military, too," Vincent said. "It was a real-world situation they could work on and it was something patriotic."

The memorial will be given as a gift in perpetuity to Patriots Park with SOTE taking responsibility for all permits, fees and documentation, Sweeney said. All construction costs, insurance and maintenance expenses will be paid for by SOTE, Sweeney said, through donations and fundraisers.

SOTE also paid to insure the transportation and installation of the memorial beam. Lakewood Ranch long hauler Carl Wallin, whose brother-in-law was a 9/11 first-responder, convinced his boss to allow him to transport the beams from New York to Venice as their contribution to the Fallen Heroes Memorial.

The Venice Fire Department will maintain the memorial along with Venice Area Beautification Inc.

Construction, installation and material estimates for the memorial came from Mori Building & Design Inc. of Sarasota.

"The initial cost … everything has been paid out of pocket," Sweeney said. "All funds to build the project will be raised through donations without use of taxpayer money."

A commemorative ground-breaking is tentatively scheduled for Sept. 11 at 3 p.m. at Patriots Park with the American Legion, VFW, Vietnam Brotherhood and Venice Fire Department Chief John Reed participating.

Sweeney said he hopes the Fallen Heroes Memorial can be completed by Nov. 11, which is Veterans Day.

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